Jordan Allen-Dutton (born April 16, 1977) is an American writer, producer, and director. He is best known for co-creating the play, The Bomb-itty of Errors, and for his writing on the stop motion television series, Robot Chicken.[1]
Allen-Dutton was born on April 16, 1977, in Palo Alto, California.[2] [3] [4] He graduated with a B.F.A. degree from New York University (NYU), Tisch School of the Arts at the Experimental Theatre Wing.[5]
In 1999, he co-created and starred in The Bomb-itty of Errors, a so-called "Add-Rap-Tation" of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, that mixed hip-hop and Shakespeare. The show debuted in New York (Off-Broadway) at 45 Bleecker St. and went on to run in London (West End), Chicago, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Dublin, Florida, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and continues to play around the world.[6] The Bomb-itty is published by Samuel French.
In 2002, Allen-Dutton co-created and starred in the MTV sketch comedy series, Scratch & Burn and attended the Sundance Institute's Screen Writing Lab with a film adaptation of The Bomb-itty of Errors.
In 2004, Allen-Dutton formed Famous Last Nerds with collaborator Erik Weiner their musical comedy Nerds, about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' rise from garage inventors to titans of the digital age.[7] [8] Weeks before their Broadway debut, Famous Last Nerds was abruptly canceled before performances, due to financial troubles.
Allen-Dutton and Weiner's video Shawshank In A Minute was directed by John Landis and won JibJab's Great Sketch Experiment in 2006.[9] Allen-Dutton co-wrote many songs with Erik Weiner including, "I'm So Straight", "One Line on the Sopranos " and "I Google Myself" produced by Yung Mars.[10]
Allen-Dutton has also written for and produced television shows such as America's Best Dance Crew, Snoop Dogg's Fatherhood, NBC's The Sing-Off, the MTV Movie Awards, the HBO poetry show Brave New Voices and Lip Sync Battle.
In addition to writing and producing Allen-Dutton founded a software company in 2004 called Talking Panda,[11] that creates applications for mobile devices. Talking Panda's software iLingo a talking phrasebook was among the first products in the apple store [12] and was featured in Time Magazine in the Nov 03, 2008, issue. Talking Panda iLingo was also included in the iPhone App store on the day it launched.[13]